Bludtek - WIP

“I do not possess much patience for idiots, but I must profess my surfeit of idiots for patients.”
- Dr. Mortimous ‘Vici’ Bach

Chapter 1The howl of the shells added an unholy amount of din to the already unbearable level of chaos inside the medical tent. Pvt. Herbert Hooley sat, propped against the tent pole, nearly at the center of the maelstrom that seemed to have consumed the Medical Military outpost. And, having lost both his legs to a landmine not 6 hours ago, it would have been understandable if he had wholeheartedly joined in the panic that seemed poised to consume one and all. However, one of the patients currently caged in this madhouse had let him into a little secret when he had almost given into the rising tide of desperation that engulfed him when he first saw the mangled state of affairs his legs had become.
“Watch him”, the veteran had said. “When the blackness starts to take over, watch him.”
Him, being a surgeon in the tent. A stately gentleman of obvious aristocratic upbringing, the calm at the eye of the storm. He seemed to disregard the utter state of chaos that was the rest of the tent, doing his job of saving lives in a most unhurried of manners. Just watching him ply his trade seemed at once to be an intrusion into a private affair, and as calming as morphine. Thin as needles, his fingers fell and rose to a cadence that only he seemed to hear, as his brows knit together in concentration. Smooth deliberate cuts and equally assured movements of his hands ensured that he was going through patients at a prodigious rate. But it was clearly, to everyone present, not enough. The wounded piled up. The charnel house out there kept taking in wholesome soldiers and kept churning out broken men. 
But no consternation passed his impassive face. He would not be swayed from his task by the mere impossibility of it. By the sheer scale of people who needed his help.
But now, there was a lull. A major had been hit by canon fire and had lacerations all along the left side of his body, his right protected by his subaltern who hadn’t been so lucky. The major’s screams left a lot to be desired from his self-restraint, as befitting an officer. But no one seemed to mind, considering the circumstances. The shrapnel lodged in his flesh still smoked. The sure sign of an infernal shell, heated by a demon to ensure that the damage continued long after steel had parted flesh. The man was being cooked from the inside out, with the only consolation being that the superheated steel had cauterized the wounds and stemmed the flow of blood. For the uninformed.
A low whistle seemed to transfix the tent. The doctor had stopped his work, and seemed quite interested in the new patient. Unfortunately for said patient, his rank had nothing to do with his interest. “Ah, wunderbar! What an excellent piece of Haemoturgy.”, the voice rasps. The dissonance between the man’s profession and his inflection is immediately apparent. This is not the voice of a gentleman doctor. It belongs to a predator, a jaeger.
“We’ve stabilized him as best as we could, doctor. But the blood transfusion seems to have no effect!”, exclaims a tiny and excitable nurse.
“That is to be expected, my dear. Do you see the lines etched on the shell here and here?”, he asks politely, with no rancor at being interrupted. “These lines are runes. A fine example of Haemoturgy. They draw their power from blood itself. The heat you see being discharged by the shrapnel is actually being generated by his blood itself, and my dear, you seem to have given him more blood.” He doesn’t seem to notice her mortified expression at having nearly killed a patient, a high ranking one at that. 
“The man is being boiled alive from the inside. Such a wonderfully inventive mind this engineer must possess, to come up with something as devious as this.”, he ruminates.
“Can you save him doctor?”, the nearly panicked nurse asks. 
“Hmm? Ja, I can. But to what extent? And at what price? That is up to him, I am afraid.”, his voice drops from a rasp to a slither. This voice is of the predator who, hidden in the grass, has finally acquired eyes on his prey.